Baby Shower on a Budget

A few friends and I just recently threw a baby (Ba-BEE) Shower for one of our closest friends, who is pregnant with their first child! It was BEE themed and so much fun to plan! As we are all wives of med/vet students, we are all on quite tight budgets, requiring us to be creative which ended up making the shower unique and a lot of fun!

Here are a few steps to have a great party on a tight budget:

1. Use printable decorations. This will save you money and will also serve as the fun, colorful decor, allowing you to use solid color paper products which is another money saver.

 

I found these great bee-themed decorations online. I printed and created the signs with card stock and twine, and I used more card stock to make DIY paper flowers on small dowels. We used TING bottles (a popular Grenadian soda) and wrapped twine around them to look like bee hives.

    

2. Have a DIY photo booth!

Our Mommy-to-BEE does not know what she is having, so we created a photo booth to let our guests guess the gender of Baby S with some fun props!

3. Ask friends to help with food. And/or find a friend who can make and decorate a cake to go with your theme!

We planned the party to be in the early afternoon which allowed us to have light snacks and desserts. As soon as we sent out the invitation, we were already getting asked how our guests could help with the party! We decided that we could use the most help with food! We had friends bring peanut butter & honey sandwiches (The Sweet & Salty), Homemade pretzels with chocolate (Stinger Stix), “The garden” of veggies and dip, as well as crockpot spinach and artichoke dip with crackers! To finish it off, we had a friend who made the amazing “Bee Hive” Carrot Cake!

 

 

4. Play games that do not require purchases. Or play games in which the game items can then be given as gifts to the Mommy-to-be (or mommy-to-bee in our case :D)

I was in charge of the “Name that Ba-BEE tune” game! I created my own fill-in sheet that I printed for the guests to use. Otherwise, I used songs that we had or found them on youtube. I played 10-50 seconds of a song that had Baby or Babe in the title and the guests had to try to figure out the Song Title and Artist! We also played “The Price is Right”, where the guests had to guess the prices of different baby items. All the items used for the game then went to the Mommy-to-bee! Our last game was “What’s In The Box?” The guests had 30 seconds to 1 minutes to look in the box (looking only, no touching) trying to remember as many items as they could. They, then, had 2 minutes to write down everything they could remember. The items used for this game were either products that one of the planners already had for her daughter or again were items that were being given to the mommy-to-be after the shower!

 

 

5. Give a personalized gift and/or one contributory gift.

We made a binder with “Wishes for Baby” fill-ins for the guests and also added yellow card stock at the back for the guests to write a message to Mommy and Baby!  We also asked our guests to contribute whatever they could to an Amazon gift card to add to Baby’s library, parenting books for Mommy and Daddy and any other things for Baby that Mommy and Daddy need for their new journey of parenting!

We had so much fun planning this shower! Everyone also loved helping out with the food and last minute decorating! It allowed them to feel more involved and a part of the whole celebration. Even with the added challenge of being in Grenada and being limited with our budgets, we were able to celebrate the mommy-to-be and this new baby that we are all so excited to meet!!